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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Muslim woman barred from Paris pool for `burquini'

By MARIA DANILOVA, Associated Press Writer

PARIS – A Muslim woman who tried to go swimming in a head-to-toe "burquini" has been banned from her local pool in the latest tussle between religious practices and secular authority in France.

Officials on Wednesday insisted they banned the woman's use of the Islam-friendly swimsuit because of France's unusually strict hygiene standards in pools — not because of official hostility to wearing overtly Muslim garb.

Under the policy, swimmers are prevented from wearing any street-compatible or baggy clothing, such as Bermuda shorts, in favor of figure-hugging suits.

The woman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in her burquini in the Paris suburb of Emerainville.

She was quoted as telling the daily Le Parisien newspaper that she had bought the burquini after deciding "it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends."

"For me this is nothing but segregation," she added.

The issue of religious attire is a hot topic in France, where head-to-toe burqas or other full-body coverings worn by Muslim fundamentalists are in official disfavor.

French lawmakers recently proposed a ban on the burqa and other voluminous Muslim attire. President Nicolas Sarkozy backs the move, saying such clothing makes women prisoners.

But Daniel Guillaume, a regional official in charge of swimming pools, said Carole's poolside rebuff had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with public health standards.

He said swimmers throughout France must wear special clothes to the pool, whereas a burquini could be worn all day long, collecting everything from food spills to sweat along the way.

"These clothes are used in public, so they can contain molecules, viruses, et cetera, which will go in the water and could be transmitted to other bathers," Guillaume said in a telephone interview.

"We reminded this woman that one should not bathe all dressed, just as we would tell someone who is a nudist not to bathe all naked," he said.

Guillaume said France's public health standards require all pool-goers to don appropriate attire — swimsuits for women and tight, swim-specific briefs for men — and caps to cover their hair. Bathers also must shower before entering the water.

Guillaume said Carole had tried to file a complaint at a local police station, but her request was turned down as groundless.

Carole told the daily Le Parisien she would protest with the help of anti-discrimination groups.

The Associated Press could not reach the woman for comment Wednesday.

Obama welcomes Sotomayor as first Hispanic justice

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says Justice Sonia Sotomayor's (SOHN'-ya soh-toh-my-YOR) achievement in becoming the first Hispanic member of the U.S. Supreme Court is an inspiration for young and old alike.

Obama says her weekend swearing-in moved the country a step closer to becoming a more perfect union.

But the president also said the historic moment isn't just about Sotomayor. He says it's about children everywhere growing up and thinking that if she can do it, maybe they can, too. Sotomayor, who is a Hispanic, grew up in public housing projects in the Bronx, N.Y., before getting an Ivy League education and starting her legal career. Obama spoke Wednesday at a White House ceremony in her honor.

Newfound Planet Orbits Backward

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.

A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.

The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.

A star forms when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Whatever movement the cloud had becomes intensified as it condenses, determining the rotational direction of the star. How planets form is less certain. They are, however, known to develop out of the leftover, typically disk-shaped mass of gas and dust that swirls around a newborn star, so whatever direction that material is moving, which is the direction of the star's rotation, becomes the direction of the planet's orbit.

WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.

Cosmic collisions are not uncommon. Earth's moon was made when our planet collided with a Mars-sized object, astronomers think. And earlier this week NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of two planets colliding around a distant, young star. Some moons in our solar system are on retrograde orbits, perhaps at least in some cases because they were flying through space alone and then captured; that's thought to be the case with Neptune's large moon Triton.

The find was made by graduate students David Anderson at Keele University and Amaury Triaud of the Geneva Observatory.

WASP-17 is about half the mass of Jupiter but bloated to twice its size. That can be explained by a highly elliptical orbit, which brings it close to the star and then far away. Like exaggerated tides on Earth, the tidal effects on WASP-17 heat and stretch the planet, the researchers suggest.

"This planet is only as dense as expanded polystyrene, 70 times less dense than the planet we're standing on," said professor Coel Hellier of Keele University.

WASP-17 is the 17th extrasolar planet found by the WASP project, which monitors hundreds of thousands of stars, watching for small dips in their light when a planet transits in front of them. NASA's Kepler space observatory is using the same technique to search for Earth-like worlds.

Obama to award 16 with highest civilian honor

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will recognize the accomplishments of actors, activists and athletes on Wednesday when he awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 16 people.

Film star Sidney Poitier, civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery and tennis legend Billie Jean King are among those set to receive the medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Other recipients include Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who has been battling brain cancer, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

Kennedy will remain on Cape Cod following the death Tuesday of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, but the senator's spokesman said his children will attend the ceremony and his daughter, Kara, will accept the award on his behalf.

Obama, awarding his first presidential medals, also will make posthumous awards to former Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, the quarterback-turned-politician who died in May, and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978.

The recipients have diverse backgrounds and achievements in fields ranging from sports and art to science and medicine to politics and public policy. The White House has said the individuals were selected for their work as "agents of change."

President Harry S. Truman established the Medal of Freedom in 1945 to recognize civilians for their efforts during World War II. President John F. Kennedy reinstated the medal in 1963 to honor distinguished service.

The other recipients are:

• Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leading breast cancer grass-roots organization.

• Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr., assistant dean of academic affairs at Florida International University School of Medicine.

• Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and mathematician known for his work on black holes and his best-selling 1988 book "A Brief History of Time." He has been almost completely paralyzed for years and communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer.

• Joe Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief, who fought in World War II wearing war paint beneath his uniform.

• Chita Rivera, actor, singer, dancer and winner of two Tony Awards.

• Mary Robinson, Ireland's first female president and one-time U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

• Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

• Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his global, pioneering work extending "micro loans" to poor people who don't have collateral.

Militant clashes kill at least 70 in NW Pakistan

By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD, Associated Press Writer

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Clashes between Taliban militants and a pro-government group in northwestern Pakistan's tribal belt on Wednesday have left at least 70 fighters dead, two intelligence officials and a militant commander said.

Turkistan Bitani, a tribal warlord allied with the government, claimed Taliban militants attacked his men in the Jandola area, just outside the stronghold of Taliban leader Baitulah Mehsid in South Waziristan.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said they used rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft guns against Bitani's village of Sura Ghar. They confirmed at least 70 people were killed. The officials, who cited wireless intercepts from the site, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Bitani told The Associated Press that 90 fighters were killed and said more than 40 houses had been destroyed. There was no way to independently confirm the death toll, as the fighting was taking place in a remote, mountainous area that is off-limits to journalists.

The clash comes one week after a U.S. missile strike in South Waziristan reportedly killed Mehsud. The U.S. and Pakistani officials say they are almost certain last Wednesday's strike killed the Taliban leader, but several Taliban fighters have disputed that, insisting Mehsud is alive.

Neither side has produced any evidence to back up their assertions, and since the claims of Mehsud's death, both the Taliban and the Pakistani government have been waging competing propaganda campaigns over the state of the Taliban's leadership.

Days after the strike, Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed a Taliban meeting to chose Mehsud's successor degenerated into a gunbattle between leading contenders to replace Mehsud — Waliur Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud — and that one of the two was dead.

Bitani made similar claims, saying there had been a gunfight at the meeting, known as a shura — although he had said both Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud were dead.

The two militant commanders both later phoned international media organizations to prove they were alive.

Mehsud and his followers have been the target of both U.S. and Pakistani operations aimed at ridding the country's northwest of militants.

Washington has increased its focus on Pakistan's rugged tribal regions because they provide safe haven for insurgents fighting international forces across the border in Afghanistan. The U.S. is also concerned the militants could undermine of the stability of the government in Islamabad, especially after Taliban insurgents briefly captured areas some 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital. That bold takeover stoked fears Pakistan's nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

A recent report written by a U.K.-based security expert said that militants had attacked nuclear facilities three times in two years, but a military spokesman denied that on Wednesday.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said there is "absolutely no chance" the country's atomic weapons could fall into terrorist hands

Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University's Pakistan Security Research Unit, wrote that several militant attacks have already hit military bases where nuclear components are secretly stored. The article appeared in the July newsletter of the Combating Terrorism Center of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Abbas said Wednesday that none of the military bases named was used to store atomic weapons.

Space Wheat Could Feed Astronauts on Mars

Clara Moskowitz
Astrobiology Magazine
SPACE.com - Tue Jul 21

Does a sandwich on Mars taste different?

The answer could be no, according to new research that found long-term spaceflight exposure doesn't change later generations of wheat seeds.

Molecular biologist Robert Ferl of the University of Florida and colleagues studied wheat seeds descended from plants that flew on the Russian Mir space station. The progenitor plants were in space for 167 days in 1991. When they were brought back to Earth, the plants gave rise to viable offspring seeds.

After four generations of plants were grown from the seeds, the researchers analyzed gene expression in the descendant wheat plants as a sensitive measure of potential lasting effects of spaceflight. They looked at thousands of genes and found no significant changes in how those genes were expressed between their test plants and a control group of plants whose forebears were never in space.

Still wheat

"We can find no difference between plants with spaceflight in their heritage or not," Ferl said. "This says you can send plants up and bring them back down and they can be the same."

Ferl said the findings offered promising evidence that growing plants on other worlds might not be that hard. People should be able to pack up a bunch of seeds for their favorite foods, and after an extended microgravity journey, land on another planet and grow the seeds without ill consequence.

Previous research found that the weightless environment of spaceflight isn't a serious impediment to plant growth, though plants do often grow differently in microgravity - sometimes even taller, without gravity to pull them down.

"Plants, while they are in orbit, do exhibit changes in gene expression because that is a different environment," Ferl said.

But no one had yet tested whether any changes occurring in the plants during their spaceflight experience were passed on to future generations. This new study, published in the May 2009 edition of the journal Astrobiology, found this does not seem to be the case.

"We can still expect wheat plants to be wheat plants once they get to Mars," Ferl said.

New challenges

That doesn't mean there aren't other challenges to transporting and growing plants on other planets.

For one, while plants are in space and on other planets, they could be exposed to strong radiation from the sun and cosmic rays. On Earth, we are blocked from the worst of this radiation by our protective atmosphere and magnetic field.

The average journey to Mars would take six months (180 days), and then the plant seeds would be exposed to higher levels of radiation while on Mars due to the red planet's thinner atmosphere.

"I do think accumulated radiation damage over time could become an issue," Ferl said.

Dealing with radiation danger is a top priority for scientists planning future space exploration missions, because humans as well as plants are vulnerable to damage from energetic radiation. Engineers must design strong shielding for both space ships and planet habitats.

Another difficulty may be what kind of soil to grow the plants in.

While some necessary minerals may already exist on other planets that can be used for agriculture, other vital plant nutrients might have to be carried over from Earth. Because shipping heavy materials via rocket is expensive, as many materials as possible must be mined or created in the new environment.

Mars soil is rich in sulfur, and it is unknown at this time if seeds from Earth would prosper or fail in the alien red soil. Plants on Earth also rely on a rich microbial diversity within the soil to carry out many functions. Mars, as far as we know, has no such organisms in its soil, so the plant-friendly soil microbes would probably need to be transported to Mars along with the seeds.

Yemen bombs Shiite rebels stronghold near Saudi

By AHMED AL-HAJ, Associated Press Writer

SAN'A, Yemen – Shiite rebels and local officials say Yemeni forces, using artillery and aircraft, bombed several rebel strongholds in a province bordering Saudi Arabia in a major escalation of the conflict.

A health ministry official in Saada province says 12 people have been killed.

The health ministry official and other local officials in Saada spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam says government forces targeted numerous areas throughout the northern province. He says there were many casualties, but did not have specific information.

The five-year-old rebellion in Saada province pits Shiite Muslims against a Sunni-led government.

GAZA FUND LAUNCHED TO HELP PALESTINIANS IN GAZA

PUTRAJAYA, Aug 12 (Bernama) -- Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today launched the Gaza Fund to raise money to purchase a cargo boat to transport aid to Gaza.

He said there was urgency in raising funds for the purchase of the vessel because with winter approaching, the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza would worsen.

He also welcomed Malaysians to volunteer and join the effort since they needed as much participation as possible.

"Of course, there is limitation in terms of the capacity on board.

"But we want to carry building materials as we need to rebuild the houses, because they (Palestinians) are now living in tents and when winter comes, it will be terrible for the old, sick and children. Many of them may die because of the winter," he told reporters at the Perdana Leadership Foundation, here, today.

Also present were his wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, chairman of the Free Gaza Movement Huwaida Arraf and trustee of Yayasan Salam Datuk Ahmad A. Talib.

Mahathir also announced that the prime minister's wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, who is the patron of the Palestinian Humanitarian Fund, donated RM1.5 million to the Gaza Fund.

It also received another RM100,000 from individuals and companies after the launching.

"I think we need about RM3.5 milion to buy the boat. Beyond that, of course we need to buy supplies, construction materials and other things so that they can rebuild their city," he said.

Asked whether boycotting Israel could be one of the solutions, Mahathir said: "Boycotting Israel is nothing because its capacity is quite small but it is the country behind Israel, and that is America.

"America has lots of products all over the world and whether we like it or not, people have to buy, and the attempt to boycott American products had not been successful.

"People still want to drink Coca-Cola, so they just don't respond (to the campaign). I think that's not a very good strategy, but this (Gaza Fund) is something really worthwhile and hopefully, it can open the eyes of the world."

Meanwhile, Huwaida said their next mission to Gaza would be in early October before the winter season and the movement hoped that people around the world would stand with the Palestinians.

"We are concerned about the human rights of the Palestinian people. We need to supply the materials to allow them to rebuild their lives," she said.

Witnesses: 5 Pakistani preachers killed in Somalia

By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Masked gunmen killed five Pakistani preachers Wednesday outside a mosque in Somalia following morning prayers, witnesses said.

Six gunmen with assault rifles and pistols stormed Tawfiq Mosque in Galkayo and forced six Pakistani preachers and a Somali man outside, said Ismail Mohamud Hassan, who was in the mosque at the time. The gunmen then opened fire, he said.

"Five of them died on the spot while two others were injured — one Pakistani and a Somali," Hassan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Galkayo, 470 miles (750 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Mogadishu.

Abdullahi Ali Nur, another witness, said the foreigners told worshipers Tuesday that they were Pakistani.

It was not clear who was behind Wednesday's killing in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. Somali militiamen rarely target religious preachers, known as Tabliq.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on each other. A moderate Islamist was elected president in January in hopes that he could unite the country's feuding factions, but the violence has continued unabated.

The country's lawlessness has spread security fears around region and raised concerns that al-Qaida is trying to gain a foothold in the Horn of Africa. The anarchy also has allowed piracy to flourish off the country's coast.

The government and African Union peacekeepers hold only a few blocks of Mogadishu, while Islamic insurgents control much of the country and operate openly in the capital in their quest to impose a strict form of Islam in Somalia.

The U.S. considers one of the most powerful Islamist groups, al-Shabab, of being a terrorist group with links to al-Qaida, but al-Shabab denies that.

Officials at the Pakistan High Commission in neighboring Kenya, which is also responsible for tracking Somali affairs, were unavailable for comment.

Israel struggles with African refugee dilemma

By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Five years after a mounted militia stormed his village, torching houses and killing his relatives, Ibrahim Saad el-Din, a refugee from Sudan's Darfur region, gazed at remnants of another slaughter: hundreds of shoes worn by Jews killed in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust.

Saad el-Din was among a dozen African refugees brought by an Israeli advocacy group to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial last week, hoping to spur public sympathy for their plight by invoking the Jewish people's own history fleeing death and persecution.

Over 16,000 asylum seekers have poured into Israel in recent years, most from Africa, posing a unique dilemma for the Jewish state.

Israel is proud of its heritage as a refuge that took in hundreds of thousands of Jews who survived the Nazi genocide. But it's conflicted over refugees from elsewhere. Israel's many wars with its Arab neighbors have left it distrustful of outsiders, while some fear accepting non-Jews could threaten the state's Jewish character. As a result, it is struggling with how to handle the non-Jewish newcomers.

"The Jewish past makes us particularly mindful of the dangerous plight of exiles and refugees and the need to help them," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "But the smallness and siege mentality of our country given its hostile environment make us more committed to maintaining our majority."

Israeli refugee advocates criticize the state, saying stints in jail and the scant support asylum seekers find in Israel fail to honor the memory of Jewish persecution through the ages.

"I think it's a great shame the way we're behaving," said Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers. "We have an extremely short memory."

Israel's current refugee influx started in 2005, when Egyptian smugglers helped a few hundred Africans sneak into Israel. The government arranged jobs for some, and as stories of their new lives spread, more came.

Just under half are from Eritrea, whose repressive government often detains returned asylum-seekers, according to Amnesty International. About one-third are from south Sudan and Darfur, whose conflicts have left millions dead and homeless, according to the U.N.

Under the U.N.'s Refugee Convention, all those claiming to be refugees should have their cases reviewed, said Sharon Harel of the U.N. refugee agency.

But the sudden influx outstripped the ability of the UNHCR and the government to process them, officials in both bodies said, resulting in stopgap policies that critics say make Israel inhospitable.

Those arriving now are detained for an average of five months — and some more than a year. They then receive release papers that must be renewed every three months but give them no right to work, though the government usually looks the other way when they take under-the-table jobs.

Simona Halperin of the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the government has a "full moral and legal commitment" to protecting refugees, but must distinguish them from economic migrants.

Asylum seekers from Sudan pose a unique problem, she said, because their mere entering Israel — which Sudan considers an "enemy state" — prevents their return.

Halperin said Israel won't deport anyone whose case has not been reviewed, and that Israel has 25 newly trained officers to interview asylum seekers. But they are starting with cases that are "easier to deal with," she said, meaning no Sudanese or Eritreans are being interviewed now. Their large number means it could be years before their status is determined, she said.

At the same time, Israel has pressed Egypt to do more to stop refugees from slipping in. Egypt has cracked down in recent years, arresting more than 1,300 would-be migrants and shooting more than 30 to death at the border in 2008, raising an outcry from human rights groups.

Perhaps no city better reflects the unstable position of Israel's asylum seekers than Arad, a remote, sun-baked city in eastern Israel near the Dead Sea.

Sudanese have flocked to the city in recent months, fleeing now-revoked regulations banning them from central Israel and the resort city of Eilat, where many worked in hotels.

About 1,500 now live in Arad, amounting to about six percent of its 23,000 residents. On a recent afternoon, scores of tall, black Sudanese could be seen walking through the town center, returning from work in Dead Sea resorts. None interacted with local residents.

Many residents want them gone, saying they take jobs from locals or drink downtown at night, sometimes fighting and harassing women.

Lilach Morgan of the Arad municipality said the Sudanese tax city services, and that the city gets no help from the national government whose policies pushed them to Arad.

"Nobody cares. Not one of the ministries came and said, 'I'm responsible for these people. We'll work together,'" she said.

Culture clashes are common between Jewish residents and the mostly Christian Sudanese population, most of whom speak no Hebrew.

Residents said the Sudanese hold loud church services on the Jewish Sabbath in a nursery next to a synagogue.

The windows of another nursery were shattered last month after a group of Sudanese held church services there on Saturday mornings, typically a time of quiet in Israeli towns.

"When I came here I was happy, but when I learned the Israelis don't like us, I was disappointed," said Puok Gach, one of the nursery's organizers.

Gach arrived in Israel by way of Egypt a few years after fighting pushed him from his south Sudanese village. He now lives with his wife and infant daughter in a small, rented apartment and works washing dishes at a Dead Sea hotel. He and his wife have to renew their papers every three months and worry they'll be sent elsewhere, he said.

Back at the Holocaust Memorial during the refugees' Aug. 3 visit, Saad el-Din viewed the exhibit of shoes from victims of the Majdanek death camp built by the Nazis during their occupation of Poland.

Saad el-Din said he's grateful for his new life in Israel. As one of 450 Darfur refugees granted the right to remain in Israel, he now has a job and an apartment, but realizes other refugees are less fortunate.

"I think the Israelis have the means to help out more," he said, suggesting the government give them longer permits or help them find work.

After addressing Saad el-Din's group, Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said the Holocaust gives Israel a "moral commitment" to be sympathetic to refugees.

"We have to be creative enough to find human solutions to the situation right now, even temporarily," he said.

Fatah Conference Boosts Abbas, but Peace May Remain Elusive

By TIM MCGIRK

Leadership elections inside Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, are a lot like comets: they only come around every 20 years or so, and are marked by a brief but spectacular display of pyrotechnics that don't alter reality on the ground. For ordinary Palestinians, life after the Fatah conference will go on much the same - they will still face the daily travails of Israeli military checkpoints around their towns, and dealing with a Palestinian government rotten with corruption and cronyism.

But within the leadership circles of Fatah, a major shift has occurred. The 2,000 delegates to the movement's first conference in two decades re-elected Abbas as their leader - no surprise there, since he ran unopposed - but it unceremoniously dumped from the ruling Central Committee many of the shuffle-footed old guard associated with the late Yasser Arafat.

Younger Palestinians, more pragmatic when it comes to accepting the existence of Israel, won 10 of the 14 empty seats on the 18-seat Central Committee. They have seen that the older generation's refusal to compromise with Israel has doomed Palestinians to an ever-shrinking future state. For every year that passes without a deal, another Jewish settlement rises on a hilltop inside the West Bank. As one new Central Committee member tells TIME, "We can't keep living on radicalism. We have to be practical and negotiate with Israel." Implicit in his remark is the realization that the Palestinians need to be ready to compromise.

Having successfully dodged demands by party delegates to account for the millions in missing aid money and donations that have flowed through Fatah's Central Committee over the past 20 years, many of Arafat's defeated cronies clambered into their limousines and sped across the Jordan Valley to their plush villas in Amman. Many of Fatah's leadership live in exile and cling to the demand that all Palestinians turned into refugees by the creation of Israel in 1948 be allowed to return to their confiscated land and homes. Successive Israeli governments have refused to recognize a right of return for the refugees, claiming that the return of millions of Palestinians would soon outnumber Israel's Jewish majority. The conference affirmed the principle of the right of return for some 4.5 million Palestinian refugees scattered mostly throughout Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Gulf States.

Still, the leadership election gave President Abbas a much-needed political booster shot. The conference has allowed him to regain control over Fatah and oust a few rebellious party rivals who were a liability and an embarrassment. But it is doubtful, say party delegates, that the new members of the influential Central Committee will assist Abbas in patching up with Hamas, the Islamist rival movement that beat Fatah in the elections of January 2006 and forcibly ejected Fatah militias from Gaza the following year. Arab and Western leaders have emphasized reconciliation between the rival Palestinian power centers as a key condition for moving forward with the peace process.

The new Central Committee includes two influential security chiefs - Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub - both of whom are accused by Hamas of leading a brutal crackdown against its members in Gaza and in the West Bank. Dahlan, in particular, is loathed by Hamas and even by many in Fatah, who accuse him of carrying out Israel's and the CIA's bidding in trying to sabotage the result of Hamas' 2006 election victory. Hamas, which refused to let 400 Fatah delegates leave Gaza to attend the Bethlehem conference, having demanded that President Abbas first release 1,000 Hamas prisoners being held in the West Bank, displayed wariness toward the outcome of their rival's conference. As a Hamas spokesman in Gaza put it: "Time will judge whether they will protect the interests of the Palestinians."

As a way of flexing its own muscles while Fatah held the spotlight, Hamas has renewed talks through the Egyptians over the release of captive Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit in exchange for several hundred Palestinian prisoners. If Hamas pulls off the deal, it would undermine Abbas' own credibility, since his years of negotiating with the Israelis in U.S.-sponsored peace talks yielded few positive results hailed by ordinary Palestinians. Over 11,000 Palestinians remain in Israel captivity, and Abbas has long demanded that Israel free many of them, but to no avail.

During the conference, Abbas, in typical fashion, bombarded the Israelis with mixed messages. On one hand, delegates proposed revising the charter of Fatah - which was founded in the 1950s to wage an armed struggle against Israel on behalf of the dispossessed Palestinians - to embrace the principle of "two states for two people," a recognition that Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist. This revision is expected to be adopted by Fatah's newly elected leadership bodies. But, on the other hand, the conference delegates refused to strike out a sentence in their charter vowing to "liquidate the Zionist entity," and the delegates did not rule out the possibility of a return to arms if the faltering U.S.-brokered peace process collapses. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have yet to meet, despite the White House clamoring for a resumption of talks, with the Palestinian leader insisting that Israel first accept a full settlement freeze.

One of the rising stars in Fatah elected to the Central Committee was Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five consecutive life sentences inside an Israeli prison for terrorism. Despite the terror charges against him, Barghouti is seen as relatively moderate and a pragmatist who advocates both a two-state solution and reconciliation with Hamas. He is also viewed a possible successor for Abbas if the Israelis decide to release him from prison. Although Israel's Minister of Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman suggested this week that Barghouti be released to help strengthen the hand of Israel's Palestinian peace partner, it remains unlikely that Netanyahu's right-wing government will free a man convicted for the death of five people. Meantime, Israel's hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Fatah's "radical and uncompromising positions" created "an unbridgeable gap between us and them." So, while Abbas may be rejuvenated by Fatah's first elections in 20 years, his job hasn't gotten any easier.

Facebook Goes Lite and Tests Twitter-Like Version of Itself

Tonight, a number of Facebook users reported that they received beta invitations to a 'lite' version of the popular social networking service. Details about this simplified version of Facebook are still sparse, but we know that the site will be available on http://lite.facebook.com and will offer users a "faster, simpler version of Facebook." Judging from what we have seen so far, Facebook Lite turns Facebook into a very Twitter-like experience.

Currently, the lite.facebook.com link doesn't go anywhere and the invites have disappeared again, but just a few days ago, at least this Twitter user got to see it in action (hat tip to MG Siegler for finding this).

Attack on Twitter?

It is interesting to see that Facebook is working on this now, especially given that it only announced the acquisition of FriendFeed yesterday. If these screenshots turn out to be true, then this would be a full-force attack on Twitter. FriendFeed was often heralded as a potential challenger for Twitter, though it never quite got the mainstream traction to fulfill this promise.

Earlier this year, Louis Gray argued that in order to succeed, FriendFeed would have to offer a simplified version of itself. Now that FriendFeed is part of Facebook, maybe the FriendFeed team will get a chance to do just this.

Overall, stripping down Facebook's interface to the bare essentials doesn't seem like such a bad idea. The current interface is getting rather cluttered and if Facebook really wants to emphasize the stream, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

US losing in Afghanistan, top general admits

John Byrne

August 10, 2009

About that country where the Sept. 11 attackers were actually given safe harbor: We’re losing.

The top American commander in Afghanistan declared that the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan in a startling interview published Monday — a striking contrast to the "Mission Accomplished" rhetoric of the Bush Administration as regards Iraq.

His remarks appear carefully tailored to lower expectations and shift public opinion in support of operations in the war-torn country where few foreign powers have ever seen victory. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were routed by a US invasion.

Currently, US operations in Afghanistan cost taxpayers about $4 billion a month. That comes to roughly $133 million per day, or $5.5 million per hour.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, admitted that the Islamic fundamentalist group had gained the "upper hand" in Afghanistan, where the US has had a presence for the last eight years. Critics of the Bush Administration bemoaned the Administration’s diversion of troops to Iraq in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, saying that the reduced level of troops fostered a climate which allowed the Taliban and al Qaeda to regroup.

McChrystal’s interview also appeared designed to augment support for increasing troop levels in parts of Afghanistan. Since President Barack Obama took office, the Pentagon has increased the number of US troops in the country. The strategy described suggests a "hearts and minds" approach which favors securing civilian areas rather than focusing on full-frontal engagement with militants.

"It’s a very aggressive enemy right now," the paper quoted Gen. McChrystal as saying. "We’ve got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It’s hard work."

The interview also quotes unnamed US officials arguing for a further increase in US troops.

"The U.S. will also need more troops if security conditions in north and west Afghanistan continue to deteriorate, the official" told the Journal.

"At the end of the day, it’s all about the math," the anonymous aide purportedly said. "The demand and the supply don’t line up, even with the new troops that are coming in."

McChrystal is calling for a mushrooming of troops in areas where the concentration of Afghan civilians are high, such as Kandahar, where the Taliban currently hold political sway.

But, he says, things are grim: Taliban forces are expanding their presence in areas beyond their usual bases in southern Afghanistan to areas north and west.

The general’s comments appear to contrast anonymous quotations published in Newsweek following the death of Talibani leader Baitullah Mehsud, who the CIA announced had been killed last week.

"Mehsud’s death means the tent sheltering Al Qaeda has collapsed," Newsweek quoted a purported Afghan Taliban intelligence officer as saying. "Without a doubt he was Al Qaeda’s No. 1 guy in Pakistan."

Twelve US troops have already been killed in Afghanistan this month.

McChrystal said he plans a "very significant" expansion of the Afghan army and national police — with a goal of doubling their size.

Martian meteorite sheds light on Red Planet's environmental history

Washington, August 11 : NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon, larger than any other known meteorite on Mars, that is providing researchers more details about the Red Planet's environmental history.

Scientists calculate that the rock, dubbed “Block Island,” is too massive to have hit the ground without disintegrating unless Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it has now when the rock fell.

It was discovered two weeks ago, when Opportunity had driven approximately 600 feet past the rock in a Mars region called Meridiani Planum.

An image the rover had taken a few days earlier and stored was then transmitted back to Earth.

The image showed the rock is approximately 2 feet in length, half that in height, and has a bluish tint that distinguishes it from other rocks in the area.

The rover team decided to have Opportunity backtrack for a closer look, eventually touching Block Island with its robotic arm.

“There’s no question that it is an iron-nickel meteorite,” said Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

“We already investigated several spots that showed elemental variations on the surface. This might tell us if and how the metal was altered since it landed on Mars,” he said.

The microscopic imager on the rover’s arm revealed a distinctive triangular pattern in Block Island’s surface texture, matching a pattern common in iron-nickel meteorites found on Earth.

“Normally this pattern is exposed when the meteorite is cut, polished and etched with acid,” said Tim McCoy, a rover team member from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

“Sometimes it shows up on the surface of meteorites that have been eroded by windblown sand in deserts, and that appears to be what we see with Block Island,” he added.

Opportunity found a smaller iron-nickel meteorite, called “Heat Shield Rock,” in late 2004.

At about a half-ton or more, Block Island is roughly 10 times as massive as Heat Shield Rock and several times too big to have landed intact without more braking than today’s Martian atmosphere could provide.

“Consideration of existing model results indicates a meteorite this size requires a thicker atmosphere,” said rover team member Matt Golombek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“Either Mars has hidden reserves of carbon-dioxide ice that can supply large amounts of carbon-dioxide gas into the atmosphere during warm periods of more recent climate cycles, or Block Island fell billions of years ago,” he added.

Hamas: Palestinian talks can not continue indefinitely

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Gaza-based member of Hamas politburo, said on Monday that Palestinian talks mediated by Egypt can not continue indefinitely, asking for ending arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank.

In a press conference in the headquarters of Cairo-based Arab League (AL) after talks with AL Secretary General Amr Moussa, Hamas strongman al-Zahar said that arresting Hamas members into prisons of the West Bank is the "main obstacle" to the Palestinian unity talks.

He said that the only way to end the status quo is to hold elections and these elections can not be held without Palestinian reconciliation and an agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

Meanwhile, al-Zahar strongly condemned the death of a member of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement on Monday in a prison run by security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority (PNA) issued conflicting statements over the reason behind the death of Fadi Hamadna, 28.

Brigadier General Adnan al-Dumiri, spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, said Hamadna has committed suicide at his solitary cell in al-Jenid prison in Nablus.

However, Hamas said Hamadna had passed away due to "brutal torture" at the hands of the general intelligence interrogators.

The mutual arrests the two sides exchange have hindered Egypt's efforts to reconcile the two movements under a unified government.

On the other hand, deposed Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haneya expressed on Monday hope that the new leadership of rival Fatah movement would be clinging to Palestinian principles and rights.

After the last round of dialogue between rival Hamas and Fatah movements failed in Cairo in late July, the Egyptians told the two sides that the upcoming round of dialogue will take place in Cairo on August 25.

However, tension between the two groups escalated after Fatah started its sixth general congress in Bethlehem, while Hamas banned Gaza Fatah congress members from attending.

Egypt has been sponsoring reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah since February, trying to reunite the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under one government.

Somalia: Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a Clerics Say They Took Over the Control of El-Der Village

The Islamic clerics of Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a have said on Tuesday that they took over the control of Elder village in Galgudud region in central Somalia.

The clerics said that they captured Elder village in central Somalia where there had been forces loyal to Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen earlier.

Officials of the Islamic clerics of Ahlu Sunna Waljam'a told reporters that they completely took over the control of Elder as the other forces left there adding that there were some areas which both forces exchanged sporadic clashes.

Reports from the region say that there was no fighting happened in the Village as the people in the village say that the capture of Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a forces came as Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen fighters left there.

There is no comment about the take over from the Islamic administration of Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen who were manning there earlier.

Reports also indicate that the sound of sporadic gunfire could be heard in the far areas of the village near where the new forces of Ahlu Sunna Waljam'a reached today.

The claim of Ahlu Sunna Waljam'a for capturing Elder village comes as there had been calm situations in Galgudud region in over the past month.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/200908110833.html.

Tensions Rise on Israel's North

Analysis by Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH, Aug 11, 2009 (IPS) - The war of words between Israel and the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah has heated up in the last week, raising fears that another war between Lebanon and Israel is imminent.

On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Lebanese government that it would be held responsible for any attacks on Israeli targets even if the attacks were carried out independently by the guerrilla group.

"The government of Lebanon cannot just say 'that's Hizbullah', and hide behind them," Netanyahu was reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz as saying. "The government of Lebanon is in power and responsible."

The Times of London reported Wednesday last week that the militia has stockpiled 40,000 rockets near the border with Israel, and is training its guerrillas to use missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv.

The Times added that it was told by Israeli officials and a senior commander that Israel's northern border "could explode at any minute."

According to Israeli security sources, the UN and Hizbullah itself, the group is now significantly stronger both militarily and politically than it was during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

Netanyahu's statements followed comments made on Sunday by a senior Hizbullah official Hashem Safi a-Din that any future military confrontation with Israel would make the war of 2006 seem like a joke.

A-Din elaborated that Hizbullah was not interested in another war with Israel but said his organisation remained on full alert in case of a pending Israeli attack.

The latest war of words came in the wake of belligerent statements made by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak last Wednesday that Israel was "not ready to accept a situation in which a neighbouring country has in its government and parliament a militia that has its own policy and 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel."

Israeli deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon further warned on Sunday that "if one hair on the head of an Israeli representative or tourist is harmed, we will see Hizbullah as responsible and it will bear the most dire consequences."

Israeli intelligence has been warning for some time now that Hizbullah has sleeper cells lying dormant abroad waiting to attack Israeli government officials or tourists in response for a car bombing in Damascus last year which killed senior Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh.

Israeli spy agency Mossad is suspected of being behind the assassination. Israel has denied involvement.

Last week Egyptian security officials arrested a group suspected of planning to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Egypt. A planned bomb attack on Israel's embassy in Baku was foiled by Azerbaijani security forces in 2008.

Ayalon told Israeli radio that it was not just in Egypt that cells were planning attacks against Israel but that Hizbullah was also plotting in other countries.

Tensions on Israel's northern borders began to rise in mid-July following an explosion at a warehouse where guerrillas are suspected to be stockpiling rockets and missiles.

The tense atmosphere on the border was further exacerbated recently when a group of unarmed Lebanese civilians waving Lebanese flags deliberately crossed the border and moved onto the disputed Shaba farms which Israel occupies. Both Syria and Lebanon say this territory belongs to Lebanon.

Israel's envoy to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, sent a letter to UN Secretary General Bank Ki-moon protesting the warehouse explosion incident.

The Israelis further claim that UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) troops were delayed by Hizbullah men from reaching the site, thereby giving them time to hide the evidence.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the 2006 conflict to an end, obliges the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah.

However, any crackdown by opposing factions of the Lebanese government on Hizbullah would cause a major confrontation as well as being difficult to implement both politically and militarily.

Hizbullah is a democratically elected part of the Lebanese government. Previously the guerrilla group was seen as a force outside of Beirut's control.

The movement earned enormous respect politically for withstanding Israel's devastating military assault during the 2006 war while simultaneously fighting back against enormous odds.

Hizbullah is also widely credited with forcing Israel's withdrawal from its self- declared "security zone" in 2000 which was established in southern Lebanon, south of the Litani river, ostensibly to protect Israel from Hizbullah and other guerrilla groups.

Last year street battles broke out in Beirut between Hizbullah gunmen and Lebanese forces and their supporters after the Lebanese government tried to close down Hizbullah telecommunications. The Lebanese government was forced to back down, and the telecommunications continued to operate.

The UN has acknowledged that arms smuggling through Syria's porous borders with Lebanon continues. Israel meanwhile has continued to violate Lebanese airspace with overflights. It has also managed a spy ring in the country for a number of years.

Nevertheless, according to Dr Samir Awad from the political science department of Birzeit University near Ramallah, an imminent Israeli attack on Lebanon is unlikely.

"It is Israeli rhetoric for domestic consumption particularly by a growing right-wing element. Israel knows a strengthened Hizbullah could inflict a serious blow on Israel, and it is not willing to take that risk," said Awad.

"Additionally if the Israeli government returns to peace talks with the Palestinians, it wants to appear to be coming from a position of strength while drawing international focus away from controversial issues such as the settlements and a two-state solution," Awad told IPS.

"There are a lot of big mouths involved," Prof. Moshe Maoz from Jerusalem's Hebrew University told IPS. "Despite this a future war between Israel and Hizbullah is not improbable. However, this will depend on Hizbullah's main benefactor Iran's actions which in turn are dependent on political developments with the U.S. which would like to weaken Iran's regional influence.

"Furthermore, if America can reach an agreement with Syria, another of Hizbullah's allies, in regard to the occupied Shaba farms and the Golan Heights, this too will influence the guerrilla group's future course of action."

Gaza's Lost Memories

by Najwa Sheikh

Gaza, August 11, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) - Another hidden but very painful part of the Palestinian sufferings is the story of families scattered around the world, many of whom have settled in different countries, after they fled in 1948. They have different lives and lost many of their childhood memories.

Childhood memories are the events and experiences lived with our sisters and brothers. They are the special moments in time that one cannot ignore or forget; they are experiences bound by the ties of brotherhood. The memories shared with my brothers and sisters are for us, which as a family we ordinarily would enjoy recalling and reliving. Recollection of the dear memories of our childhood would be possible if we were not separated by such a distance.

My own relatives are scattered across Saudi Arabia, Libya and Lebanon. Neither my parents nor I know anything about their children or lives, how they look, or the type of life they live. There are, however, rare telephone calls from time to time.

A week ago my mother-in-law received the news that one of her brothers died in Kuwait. I was surprised of course because it was the first time I had heard of him. It seems that he, like many other Palestinians who have left long ago, made his life outside of Gaza and lost connection with his roots. My mother-in-law, though not remembering his image, was very sad to receive this news, wishing she had the chance to share with him again the old childhood memories. She longed for not being able to know him better or to see face after 70 years. My mother-in-law wished for being to make fun and tease, as brothers and sisters do irrespective of age, once more.

The same story can be told of my other family members. Separation of physical distance and the loss of contact has only brought more pain and suffering. The saddest part of this that our old memories have faded and our present life is filled with no memory or shared experiences that come with families who age together.

I remember when my uncle passed away five years ago, who I had never met or talked with, there was no feelings of sadness or sense of loss. It is not that my heart is made of stone. I had not one single memory with or even an image in my mind of my uncle. Will my brothers children living abroad also feel the same?

I have two brothers living outside of Gaza. They are married and have children. Even though we talk on the phone, there are no memories to share. I cannot say anything about their hobbies; what they like or dislike; or choose gifts because of not knowing their favorite colors or the toys they like most. They too cannot say anything about me, their other aunts, or grandparents. My brothers' children will feel the same as I felt for when my uncle departed this world.

As time fades away and age descends, I too will forget the image of my brothers as my mother did when my uncle passed away. I too will not be able to laugh, tease and make fun of them as they grow old with age. One day I too will receive similar news that my father and my in-laws received. Will I grieve, cry, able to share our childhood memories or my sadness be kept inside? The physical distance only increases the suffering of all Palestinian families living apart.

Najwa Sheikh
A Palestinian PT special writer living in the Gaza Strip

Addicted to War: America's Brutal Pipe Dream in Afghanistan

Chris Floyd

August 11, 2009

Looks like the "Good War" in Afghanistan is morphing even more directly into the "Drug War" that the U.S. government has been waging all over the world -- and especially against its own people -- for almost 40 years now, with all the attendant aggrandizement of authoritarian powers and degradation of civil liberties and human rights.

As The Times reports, and Pentagon brass confirmed, the "continuity government" of the Obama Administration has drawn up yet another "hit list" of people to be arbitrarily assassinated: 50 "drug lords" allegedly associated with the Taliban. No doubt the many drug lords associated with the American-installed Afghan government -- and those cooperating directly with the Western occupation -- are exempt from this dirty laundry list.

Of course, the runaway cultivation of opium in Afghanistan -- which is now flooding not only the West but also vast swathes of Central Asia with cheap heroin -- is a direct result of the American invasion in 2001: an operation ostensibly designed to capture Osama bin Laden, who somehow curiously slipped away from the Americans' curiously porous encirclement, never to be seen again (except of course for a few curiously timed transmission that seemed, curiously enough, to be geared to the domestic political needs of America's militarist factions). Of course, before the invasion, the Taliban had largely -- if ruthlesssly -- eliminated the cultivation of opium in the areas under its control. But the American military -- and its gung-ho CIA operatives ("We're killing people!" as one CIAer exulted to the Boston Globe) -- instead empowered the Northern Alliance: the Russian-backed conglomerate of warlords and druglords who were freely growing opium in their territories.

Now the Afghan insurgents -- themselves a loose conglomeration of factions given the conveniently misleading monolithic moniker of "the Taliban" -- have taken up the opium trade to help finance their operations as well. Meanwhile, poor Afghans are dependent on the opium trade, which fetches prices far above anything else they can grow. After all, their society and economy have been systematically destroyed by 30 years of savage war, kicked off not by the Soviet intervention in 1980 but by a terrorist campaign by religious extremists armed, funded and encouraged by the good Christian administration of Jimmy Carter, whose "national security" honcho, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wanted to draw the Soviets into "their own Vietnam" in support of their client regime in Kabul. Now, as Jason Ditz – an indispensible chronicler of the Terror War in Central Asia – points out, the Americans are adopting the Soviets' own failed strategy in Afghanistan: death-dealing military "surges" combined with wads of cash thrown blindly into the economic chaos caused by the military action.

But you can't "build" a state while you are simultaneously waging war inside it. And you certainly can't build it by killing cucumber farmers, as U.S. forces did the other day. Expect even more of this as the Pentagon gears up its "Drug War" weaponry to eliminate the rivals of its favored criminals – sorry, I mean to wipe out the scourge of Afghanistan's Taliban drug lord devils.

If all of this seems grimly familiar, that's because it is. I've been writing about the merging of the Terror War and the Drug War in Afghanistan since… November 2001, a few scant weeks after the Bush Administration sent the "carpet of bombs" they promised the Taliban – back in June 2001; yes, before "the whole world changed" on 9/11 – if they didn't play ball on the oil pipelines that Western consortiums were looking to lay across Afghanistan. It was obvious even then where we were going, as I noted in the Moscow Times, in that long-ago November:

Among the isolated, out-of-step losers who dare open their mouths to mutter "doubts" about America's military campaign in Afghanistan, you will sometimes hear the traitorous comment: "This war is just about oil."

We take stern exception to such cynical tommyrot. No one who has made a clear and dispassionate assessment of the situation in the region could possibly say the new Afghan war is "just about oil."

It's also about drugs.

For, although we must now hail the warlords of the Northern Alliance as noble defenders of civilization, the fact is that for some time they have also functioned as one of the world's biggest drug-dealing operations. Indeed, one of the main sticking points between the holy warriors of the alliance and their ideological brethren in the Taliban has been control of the profitable poppy, which by God's grace grows so plentifully in a land otherwise bereft of natural resources. (Always excepting the production of corpses.)

In the good old days, when the brethren were united against the Soviet devil, all shared equally in the drug-running trade, under the benevolent eye of that great lubricator of illicit commerce, the CIA. When the Northern Alliance was driven from Kabul – having killed 50,000 of the city's inhabitants during their civilized rule – the Taliban seized the lion's share of Afghanistan's opium production. The noble warlords managed to hold on to several prize fields in the north, however, and together with avaricious Talibs, they helped fuel a worldwide rise in heroin traffic.

Earlier this year, the Bush administration bribed the Taliban to stop growing opium – a most effective use of baksheesh, according to the UN, which found that Afghan opium production dropped from 3,300 tons annually to less than 200. But the Northern Alliance leapt manfully into the breach, engineering a threefold rise in opium output on their territory this year.


This note of praise for the Bush pay-offs to the Taliban was not ironic; I heartily approve of the notion of large-scale bribery to achieve foreign policy objectives. It is much better – and in the end, far cheaper to the public purse – than the murderous ravages of war. Alas, the murderous ravages of war are all too often the actual objective of imperial foreign policy; the profits, power and domination that accrue to the warmakers are far more enticing than the non-violent ends that can be achieved by bribery (or even by, god forbid, actual diplomacy: negotiation, compromise, mutual respect, that kind of thing). Or as Cheritto put it so memorably to his fellow robbers in Heat: "You know, for me, the action is the juice."

And so on and on we go. The new head of the army of our Good War ally, Britain, is saying that the mission in Afghanistan "might take as long as 30 or 40 years." By which time there will not be "tomb enough and continent to hide the slain."

US Marines assault Taliban town in Afghanistan

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer

DAHANEH, Afghanistan – U.S. Marines have mounted a helicopter assault to seize the Taliban-held town of Dahaneh in southern Afghanistan and are fighting gain control of the area ahead of next week's presidential elections.

The assault began before dawn Wednesday, with Marines entering the town as others battled militants in the surrounding mountains.

Associated Press journalists traveling with the first wave say Marines were met with small arms, mortar and rocket propelled grenade fire. Fighting is still under way hours later, with U.S. Marine Harrier jets streaking over the town and dropping flares in a show of force.

Marines have captured several suspects and seized about 66 pounds (30 kilos) of opium.